Heritage Toronto joins fight to save Hearn generating station

Heritage Toronto, an arm’s-length city agency funded mainly through donations, has entered the fight to save the enormous Hearn Generating Station, a listed heritage building in Toronto’s port lands.

“This building is a symbol of the former waterfront of Toronto,” said Gary Miedema, historian at Heritage Toronto. “The Hearn was built there so it could easily receive coal brought up the St. Lawrence Seaway. In a place where everyone thinks that there is no history, this is a building that could anchor that history.”

Last August, Ontario Power Generation, which owns the building, applied for a demolition permit for the structure, according to Armando Barbini, manager, plan review at the Toronto Building department.

“We have received an application for demolition from an agent for the owner, or an employee of OPG, or it could be a demolition company, on behalf of the owner, which is OPG,” Mr. Barbini said.

He said the city has no power to refuse the demolition permit, and is merely waiting for a road damage deposit before it will issue the permit to the wreckers.

“We’ve been given advice that the Ontario Heritage Act is not applicable to a provincial agency,” Mr. Barbini said. “It’s in the hands of the province.”

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OPG, which is provincially owned, insisted yesterday that it has not applied to demolish the Hearn, but that the application came from Studios of America, a company with a lease on the Hearn that lasts through 2024. OPG said the tenant’s lease permits it to demolish the vast structure.

The generating station, built in 1949-51 of structural steel, reinforced concrete slab floors and brick infill walls, bears the name of Richard Lancaster Hearn, an engineer, nuclear power entrepreneur, and chairman of Ontario Hydro from 1955-1956. When it opened in 1951 it was the largest thermal-electric station in Canada.

Studios of America spokesman Paul Vaughan said his company would prefer to reuse the building, and has asked the city to put its four hockey/skating rinks, for which Ottawa has donated $34-million, into the structure. He said he has invited Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Paula Fletcher to tour the Hearn.

Ms. Fletcher said she has not received Mr. Vaughan’s invitation. She believes the province, which owns OPG, should step in and save the Hearn. “All eyes are on the waterfront,” she said. She will present a motion to city council Thursday in support of saving the Hearn.

A representative of Mr. Ford’s office said the Mayor would have no comment on the issue.

Readers lined up on both sides of the issue yesterday.

“It simply boggles the mind that anyone can see any ‘aesthetic’ value in restoring the Hearn,” wrote Paul Millar, an investor who owns heritage property in Toronto. “And to think that it might be a viable option to convert this into some kind of ‘ice palace’ for the sum of $32-million. Please!”

But Madis Pihlak, an associate professor of architecture at Penn State university in Harrisburg, Pa., wrote to say that one of his student groups is worked on plans for a training centre in the structure, adding, “the Hearn is an amazing building that should not be demolished.”

And William J. Phillips, a retired electrical utility engineer in Nova Scotia, noted that Nova Scotia Power is converting the Water Street Thermal Station, a smaller version of the Hearn on the Halifax waterfront, into a new corporate HQ, set to open next year. “The Hearn should not be demolished and in my view a rink is only one of many interesting possibilities that the building offers.”